MORGANTOWN, W.Va. — Students from West Virginia University have taken the initiative to help Mountain State residents affected by the flash floods that occurred on Father’s Day.

In response to the flooding that killed eight people in Ohio County and caused a significant amount of damage in Marion County, outreach events program coordinator with WVU Land-Grant and Community Outreach Aidan Priest, who is also a graduate student at the university, teamed up with over a dozen other students to travel to both the Wheeling and Fairmont areas to bring donations and offer physical help. Priest traveled to Wheeling with seven other students, and nine others, led by Logan Pierce, traveled to Fairmont.

“I had people that I reached out to and coordinated with; they were people that I knew through our student government organization that luckily were here working orientation all summer, and then the one person from Tau Kappa Epsilon,” said Priest, who also used his connections as a fraternity alumnus. “I reached out to the chapter and asked if they wanted to join, and he joined on.”

According to Priest, the efforts to help those affected by the flooding in Ohio and Marion Counties began on the Tuesday after the flash floods took place. Originally planned to travel to Wheeling for a celebration scheduled for retiring WVU President E. Gordon Gee, but that eventually changed to coordinated relief efforts, which included conversations with WVU Land-Grant and Community Outreach and the members of the student body in Morgantown for the summer. Once a donation drive was hosted on Tuesday, students then began to make plans to travel to both counties.

“We originally knew we wanted to have people go into the actual flood zone and offer physical assistance,” said Priest. “From there we started planning and found West Virginia Mutual Aid and West Virginia VOAD, and then we started getting some students to go join us.”

Once they arrived and drove into Wheeling and Tridelphia, Priest quickly understood the magnitude of bringing supplies and, more importantly, physical labor to the affected areas. On the way to the Wheeling donation distribution center, they saw numerous homes and businesses destroyed, with residents working with emergency officials to determine how much was lost, and for some it was everything. This was added to the eight people who were reported to have died in Ohio County.

“We just turned a corner down the main road along the creek there, and it looked like a bomb went off,” said Priest. “It was crazy; it was mind-boggling to see how many houses could be in that disarray.”

WVU Land-Grant and Community Outreach brought donations of cleaning and non-perishable supplies along with 50 boxed meals for volunteers working at the distribution center in Wheeling as part of a contribution by Panera Bread.

While the damage, or the loss of life, was significantly different in Marion County in comparison to Ohio County, Priest mentioned that the nine students that traveled to the Fairmont area were able to immediately go to work as soon as they arrived. With a truck full of donations delivered ahead of them, the students were immediately put to work at the Fairmont distribution center, where they were able to help dozens of residents who sought either supplies or help with cleanup.

“We got in touch with their donation center, originally, they were going to go to the Fairmont Public Safety Building and meet the Walmart truck that got delivered to Fairmont,” said Priest. ”

But it ended up coming early, so for the nine students that were down there, instead of loading the trucks, they got to be a part of the distribution process.”

For the WVU students that took part in the relief efforts, this will be one of several trips that they intend to make over the next several weeks. This includes plans to drive down to Fairmont this weekend and potentially Wheeling, depending on need. With plans to travel down to McDowell County to help people affected by flooding earlier in the year, Priest considers this just another service that he feels the WVU community is more than willing to do.

“What does that mean as an institution? It is to serve our state,” said Priest. “And really make sure they know that we are here to be a part of the state and we are here to help them.”